novelraw Chapter 110
Chapter 110
Chapter 110
“This way.”
The first place Evangeline guided me to was beneath the Academy, to be exact, the sewers.
Borrowing the words of our little witch, she said that a so-called ‘thread of mana’ was connecting the Academy to where Araya’s true body lay, through the sewer system.
But there was one problem.
“……Do we really have to go in here?”
“This body doesn’t want to go in either. But it is hard to find from the surface.”
“……”
With that, Evangeline pointed toward a manhole cover near the Academy.
Aaron’s obsessive-compulsive self might have been erased, but that didn’t mean I wanted to jump straight in.
Even if the Anti-rain had thinned it out somewhat, the water flowing there could hardly be called first-class purified water. No, on the contrary, there was an even greater chance it would reek more horribly, mixed with the chemical stench unique to the Anti-rain.
It was only natural that I didn’t want to enter.
Should I just give up on finding Araya? Yeah, maybe he was a good guy to begin with, and killing people was a bad thing anyway……
“There is no time. Following the thread from here is the surest way.”
“……Wait a moment.”
I tried to escape reality for a while, but Evangeline’s voice brought me firmly back to my place, as if to say that was impossible.
Damn it.
If I had to step into a place where sewage flowed, I needed time to mentally prepare. At the very least, I needed another method, something to keep my expensive suit clean, some sort of groundbreaking idea……
“……Hold on.”
“What is it?”
“There’s no need to go in at all.”
“W-wait, are you saying you’ll just throw this body in there alone? Aaron, how could you come up with such a cruel thought…!”
What the hell is she talking about.
Do I look like the kind of man who would use a method so vicious even Satan would weep?
If I actually shoved Evangeline in alone, Maria and Raina might very well flip out and gift me with a back-smash.
“That’s not it.”
“Then you have another method?”
“Yes.”
Alright, calm down.
I had gotten swept up in the mood, filled with the thought of, ‘I’ll find the bastard myself and finish him off!’ as if it were some grand climax.
But after staring at the manhole cover, I finally realized there was no need for that.
“Evangeline, I am rich.”
“……What?”
That was a very important fact.
Important enough that it deserved three stars and a heavy highlight with a fluorescent marker.
At my sudden declaration of wealth, Evangeline’s face twisted.
Her expression said, what nonsense is this man spouting now? She must still be too young to understand the true value of money.
“Listen carefully, Evangeline.”
Money is very important.
With money, you can do anything in this city. You can even save someone’s life, or hire someone to go down into that accursed, hell-stinking sewer in our stead.
Ah, to think I’d be enlightened to such a basic yet vital truth.
Perhaps reflecting on oneself isn’t best done by looking into books or mirrors, but by staring at a manhole cover.
Anyway.
“We’ll just hire someone else to go in.”
When I said that, Evangeline’s face cooled somewhat as she replied…
“You truly seem to be a genius.”
She fully agreed with my idea.
So, she hadn’t wanted to go in either.
In the end, there was no need to urgently recruit manpower or buy new equipment.
There was already a team formed to root out Ashita-kyo, so I could just entrust the task to them.
I simply provided them with a high-performance mana detector (expensive), every bit as accurate as Evangeline’s eyes, and handed it over to the tracking team.
I even threw in a generous bonus, which set their motivation ablaze, and before long, I received good news.
[We… we think we’ve found it!]
I rushed at once to the location they had marked.
It wasn’t far from the Academy; on the surface, it was just an ordinary commercial building. But of course, being in a cyberpunk world, there was an adult shop planted right on the first floor, so I covered Evangeline’s eyes to shield her.
I pushed open a strange, unmarked door at the side of the building, revealing a staircase leading underground, in a direction completely unrelated to the building above.
Together with Evangeline, I descended, where the team members who had tracked through the sewers were waiting. Beside them stood a massive double door.
“Evangeline, is this the place?”
“Yes. Without a doubt.”
Since it seemed to be the right spot, I generously praised the team for their efforts and dismissed them.
Then, when I swung the door open, an enormous underground hall appeared, its original purpose impossible to guess.
And there, at its center, was Araya.
“Here you were.”
I approached him while checking the surroundings for any traps. Evangeline too was turning her head back and forth, as if checking the flow of mana.
But there seemed to be no traps. Instead, what I found were countless corpses laid out around Araya’s center.
‘Those clothes… Ashita-kyo believers.’
The believers’ corpses were arranged in a circle around Araya. And the way they were placed was nothing short of grotesque.
They weren’t simply lying straight; their poses were like yoga postures, to the point where they almost looked alive at first glance.
Beneath those corpses, patterns far removed from Buddhism were drawn in the believers’ blood. And at the very center, Araya sat cross-legged, as if nothing were amiss.
“Be careful, Aaron. The ‘Well’ has opened. Without opening the Well, it would have been impossible with only the power stolen from this body.”
The Well?
Before I could even ask what that was.
“……So you’ve come.”
Araya opened his eyes and faced me.
The moment my gaze met his, I realized from the way his pupils moved that his eyes were mechanical.
And not just that.
Through my Ocular Scanner, the information revealed that every part of his body was mechanical.
Arms and legs, organs, muscles, and bones.
Even his brain.
What that meant was clear.
“……So you’re an Android too.”
“You noticed immediately. Even my believers never realized until the moment they died.”
“Your believers, huh…”
“I was an executive of Ashita-kyo.”
A character that hadn’t appeared in the original.
It seemed he too had transmigrated into an extra.
And yet—what irony. An Android was holding an executive seat in Ashita-kyo, an organization whose doctrine was anti-machine and anti-technology.
“You hid your identity well.”
“I believe so too. But in a way, it was only natural.”
Araya explained.
The body’s original owner had been a man of great virtue. As an Error Unit who had gained self-awareness, he had by chance joined Ashita-kyo and studied, feeling his soul rise to a higher state.
That led him to devote himself even more passionately, and his status within the group rose steadily.
No one would have suspected such a devout and passionate believer to be an Android.
Only then did I realize.
‘Could it be that one?’
In the original, Ashita-kyo had been branded a cult and descended into ruin. The cult leader sharpened his blade of vengeance against the protagonist who brought them to such an end, and in his last struggle launched a full-scale assault.
In that process, countless believers died and were injured. The protagonist could not help but feel bitter at the sight of corpses scattered throughout the temple.
In this wretched world without anything to rely on, they died simply because they had chosen the wrong thing to place their faith in. That reality struck him painfully.
Among those corpses, there was one that caught his eyes. A cross-legged Android believer, receiving bows in the prayer room, now completely shut down.
An Android that had only briefly flashed by.
Perhaps that was the very character Araya had transmigrated into now. If so, unlike the current Araya, the Araya of the original story had truly been a virtuous monk.
“Is it not laughable? In the most irreligious religion, the most inhuman being drew closest to enlightenment.”
“……I’m not interested.”
It was an amusing story in its own way.
In the original, it had been just a passing scene. But perhaps the author had put more thought into designing Araya than I had realized.
But to me now, it didn’t stir anything. Even if he had once been a virtuous monk, that was a story of before he became who he was now.
Just as I had shed the persona of Aaron Stingray the murderer, the current Araya was no longer some virtuous Android monk.
He was now a killer who had murdered Evangeline, who bore him no malice. He was a criminal who spread dangerous Junk Chips throughout the city. Above all, he was an enemy standing in my way.
Even if his ego as ‘Araya’ had grown stronger under the influence of the body, just as mine had in Act 4 of Part 1, that didn’t absolve him of what he had done.
‘No, that makes him even more vile.’
If Araya truly had been a good character.
Then all the atrocities committed up until now were purely the will of the one who had stolen that body.
“I have no intention of exchanging long words with you.”
“Nor do I.”
Araya looked up at me while sitting cross-legged.
A similar aura to what I had seen before began to writhe behind his back, and the corpses of the believers around him began to sink slowly into the ground, as if into a swamp.
[Warning. Warning. Mana levels rising sharply.]
The module installed within me sent a warning message.
But instead of counterattacking immediately, I merely activated and drew out [Cloud Spider] and [Techblade], then turned to Evangeline.
“Evangeline, may I attack?”
“…To realize it before this body even spoke, you truly are remarkable. Yes, I have yet to fully analyze the ritual, but it is likely a trap.”
That bit about a ‘Well’ earlier had kept me from acting rashly—and it seemed I had chosen correctly.
“The bastard used those corpses just now as mediums to forcibly open a great ‘Well’ connected to the ‘River.’ He has used human souls like magic wands to carve open the passage.”
“Simply put.”
“…He must not be killed immediately.”
In short, Araya was unstable.
If he died now, the fragile balance being barely maintained would collapse, and something irreversible would occur.
“Explain.”
“The Calamity of Mana would be reenacted here.”
The Calamity of Mana.
That referred to the emergence of [Mystic], over two hundred years ago, which had driven humanity into the outlying cities of Earth.
Good thing I had brought Evangeline.
When it came to magical matters like this, if I had blundered into a trap, I would have been helpless.
“The method?”
“This body shall undo the ritual. Until then, I need you to buy me time.”
“Understood.”
Well, that was simple enough.
In short.
Don’t kill him right away—just teabag him.